Sweetness and Power

At Scranton there was a great parade. Governor Gifford Pinchot of Pennsylvania led it. With him were John L. Lewis, President of the United Mine Workers, Frank Morrison, Secretary of the American Federation of Labor, and other notables. It was said that 10,000 miners were in line. It was said that 100,000 people looked on They took part in unveiling a monument.

The man whom they honored is dead. He was John Mitchell, President of the United Mine Workers from 1899 to 1908, Vice President of the American Federation of Labor from 1898 to 1914. But his achievements were more than his titles.

At 13, he was a doorboy at an Illinois coal mine. At 32, he had fought and won one of the greatest labor battles that the U. S. has ever witnessed, the battle for a "living wage." The fight which he won was the turning point in the coal mine labor struggle. Until 1902, the mine operators had had decidedly the upper hand. Since then, mine labor has steadily but surely taken the dominating position.

But John Mitchell, who managed this crisis, was not a man of violence. He had little so-called education, but much breadth of understanding. His eyes were keen, his mouth firm, his forehead high. Inflammatory rhetoric was not part of his appeal. Sympathy and dig nity were his tools. Collective bargaining and arbitration were his weapons, the strike only an ultimate resort.

This was the equipment with which he won the anthracite strike of 1902, the strike into which President Roosevelt injected his forceful personality. At one meeting of railway presidents and miners' officials called by Roosevelt, everyone gave way to superheated anger. Only Mitchell, the storm centre, remained cool. Roosevelt was reported to have said afterwards: "There was only one man in the room who behaved like a gentleman, and that man was not I."

Then and afterwards he was the idol of the miners. In the ranks of Labor he stood next to Samuel Gompers. Governor Pinchot in dedicating the monument declared:

"He was as great in personality as he was in sympathy. He was equally at home by the side of a black-faced slate pl:cker, in the office of a captain of great industries and in the council room of the President of the United States. To one President -- Theodore Roosevelt -- he was a loyal, constant friend, a tower of strength and a flaming messenger of the Roosevelt gospel of the square deal. No one in the anthracite region needs to be told the story of that long, close friendship -- a friendship fruitful of prosperity and peace to this whole region."